Heritage NZ

Richard Silcock explores the development and construction of the country’s first roads.
WHEN THE FIRST Europeans settled in New Zealand their attention was largely given to creating towns, with harbours and ports to service them.
Apart from the dirt roads in towns, travel to inland areas was mainly via horse drawn wagon along...

This article first appeared in Contractor's April issue.
Auckland International Airport is currently undergoing extensive development and has plans for future expansion. RICHARD SILCOCK looks back on its history and current and future development.
FLYING INTO AUCKLAND a few days after their historic flight across the Tasman in 1928,...

More than a century after his death, Sir Julius Vogel’s legacy lives on in every branch of New Zealand civil construction. HUGH DE LACY retraces the career of the original big-thinker.
He stands out like a beacon in New Zealand politics in the second half of the 19th Century, catapulting the infrastructure of Britain’s most remote...

It was possibly the country’s greatest engineering feat, and certainly one of its most profound political milestones. HUGH DE LACY tells the story of the Manapouri power station.
There could be no denying the economic potential that such a freak of Fiordland nature offered: a great lake – in fact two of them, conveniently connected...

From its opening in 1923 the Otira rail tunnel has ranked as an extraordinary feat of engineering. HUGH DE LACY tells its story.
It was the vast quantities of gold being mined on the West Coast from the 1860s onwards that prompted the good burghers of Canterbury to dream of a rail link across the great divide of the Southern...

Featured photo: SIR GEORGE GREY SPECIAL COLLECTIONS, AUCKLAND LIBRARIES
It is a now a direct, all-sealed, and exceptionally scenic link between Queenstown and Wanaka, but Otago’s Crown Range Road is perhaps more famous for a pub built on the original miner’s track in 1863.
THE DRUNKARDS’ LAMENT ‘By the Dry Cardrona’ briefly...

A 75-metre section of what is believed to be part of Northland’s oldest road, along with the remains of an old river landing, were recently ‘rediscovered’ under dense and overgrown native bush by a team from Heritage NZ who were involved in an archaeology project. By Richard Silcock.
The road is believed to date back to early 1842...

Classic Machines: Wabco’s 229F scraper. Fresh out of the Peroria factory, a brand new Wabco C229F gets the once over from a proud employee. The design of the 229 was very rugged, as can be soon from the massive gooseneck assembly. The non-muffled GM 8V-71 can be easily seen under the hood. A fine looking machine indeed. #Wabco #scrapers #classicmachines #contractormagazine ... See MoreSee Less

The excavator we saw performing at the Transdiesel product launch event was built in Volvo's Korean factory and had been in the country a fortnight. This is the largest crawler excavator in the company's range: at the time of writing it's the sole EC950E in New Zealand. More EC950Es will inevitably follow, but there's something special about watching a unique machine. [ 121 more words ]

Restoring six SH1 bridges damaged in the Kaikoura quake involved a very complex heavy haulage programme to get over 100 concrete beams from the North Island to the South in a few short months. By Mary Searle Bell. IN LATE 2016, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake rocked Kaikoura, devastating the landscape. State Highway 1 between Seddon and Cheviot was badly damaged – the NZ Transport Agency estimated that close to one million cubic metres of rock and debris fell onto the road and adjacent railway line. [ 990 more words ]

Classic scrapers: The Cat 633 elevating scraper Sitting quietly in a grassy paddock awaiting its next job, this 633 is in great shape for a machine 46 years old. Major add-on is the aftermarket ROPS, mandatory on US motorscrapers since the 1960s. #caterpillar #heayequipment #heavyiron #heavymachinery #scrapers #classicmachines ... See MoreSee Less